Music Issue #2

The Music Issue #1

Spoon: "Gimme Fiction"
I don't really know what to say about this album other than that it is really really good. Besides a few songs my sister put on a mix for me, I hadn't heard much Spoon before, so I can't really speak to how it compares to their older stuff. But this album is great; just a collection of very well written songs. What else can you say?

Richmond Fontaine: "The Fitzgerald"
Reminds me of a mix between early Tom Waits and Smog. So as you can imagine, this isn't exactly a pick-me-up album. It's kind of one of those CDs which in its simplicity rides the line between being powerfully bare and kind of forgettable. After 2 week I haven't decided which. Am kind of curious if anyone else has heard him (other than Miguelito of course).

Kanye West: "Late Registration
So you might be wondering, what conviced this 31 year-old white boy to buy a Kanye West album? Was it him calling out Dubya? Was it him single handedly bringing the prep into gangsta? Was it his anti-bling anthem "Diamonds From Sierra Leone" (that made me feel way less guily about Marsha rocking the Cubic Zirconium)? Actually, it was his incredible song "Gold Digger" that I can't seem to get out of my head. Now, most computer literate music fans of my generation would have just downloaded the one song they liked, but I thought Kanye deserved better. And although no songs on the rest of the album reach the utter awesomness of "Gold Digger", it's pretty good. Not great, but it's a solid album with only one overly R+Bish song that I'm forced to skip (a duet with Moesha). And what a nice young man Kanye is! On the CD is a shout-out to his mom, a sad recollection of his grandmother in the hospital, and even a call for safer driving ("Drive Slow Homey"). Overall, I feared regretting this impulse buy and, thus far, am happy with it.